'City needs to grow with nature to survive climate change'

The Times of India , Tuesday, December 29, 2015
Correspondent :
New Delhi: To avoid getting flooded like Chennai in a changing climate, Delhi will need to integrate its human settlements with small and large biodiversity habitats such as wetlands, scrub forests and floodplains.

Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage's (Intach) natural heritage division recently submitted an exhaustive report to Delhi Dialogue Commission (DDC) and other Delhi government departments on the impact climate change could have on Delhi, and how the city can prepare itself with maps of various geological zones.

The report states that retreating glaciers in Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand will lead to water shortages and even drought in river basins upstream and downstream of Delhi. Satellite images show that, of the 29 glaciers feeding Gori Ganga, a tributary of the Ganges, 20 are retreating.

Intach also cites assessments by Urban Climate Change Research Network (UCCRN) that found that the mean temperature of Delhi has risen between 1931 and 2005, although not significantly. However, most of the warming has happened in the past three decades.

The semi-arid Delhi region is likely to warm up by 1.5-2.5 degrees Celsius by the 2050s. "In 1987 and 2002 there was hardly any rain in Delhi. These were aberrations, but due to climate change such phenomena could increase in frequency," said Manu Bhatnagar from Intach, adding that they are trying to see how the city would endure two consecutive years of drought. "Do we have backup? Rainfall pattern has changed a lot; we are losing waterbodies. Between 1999 and 2010, 25% of Delhi's waterbodies were lost. The report devises a plan to deal with such a contingency," said Bhatnagar.

 
SOURCE : http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/City-needs-to-grow-with-nature-to-survive-climate-change/articleshow/50359924.cms
 


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